


just a stranger you know

by adverbialstarlight



Series: voltron bingo stuff [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Gen, Loneliness, Post Season 7, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), Team as Family, That's basically what this is, i think, just angsty projecting dude, that's enough tags for today
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 14:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16745668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adverbialstarlight/pseuds/adverbialstarlight
Summary: Four times Keith has felt isolated from his peers and one time where he realizes that he wants to change that.aka this short thing of angst has been sitting finished in my google drive since AUGUST for voltron bingo and as the event comes to an end I realize that I need to post my fills.





	just a stranger you know

**Author's Note:**

> written for voltron bingo cards Keith (isolation) and AU (canon). title comes from Loser by Falling in Reverse because clearly i can't resist titling more seriously toned fics after emo songs.
> 
> *unedited/betaed and written 3 months ago, please pardon any mistakes

Keith did not belong on Earth.

There was some sort of disconnected feeling he got whenever the other paladins would talk about it in the Castle of Lions, lying around in post-battle exhaustion. When he thought back about his eighteen years of life there, nothing really stood out. There was his father, sure, but other than him there was really only Shiro. The things that he enjoyed about Earth just from the top of his head was brief; Watching his father draw when he came home from work. Flying. Stars, something that he’d ended up seeing a lot more of later on. Riding on hover bikes with Shiro. All things that were long gone or still out in space with him.

There was nothing pulling him back to the planet like there was for Lance, Pidge, and Hunk.

In everything that he’d done when there, Keith always felt like an outsider, that he was intruding on something that he had no right to and that he should be somewhere else. Where, he wasn’t entirely sure, but it wasn’t Earth.

Later on he discovered that it was because he was part Galra, but in the time before that he kept his distance. From the people, the activities, everything. No matter how much he longed to participate, to feel a part of it even a little bit, Keith knew that it wouldn’t ever be possible, so what was the point? There were things that could happen if you did things to help get there, and there were some things that, no matter how hard you tried, you wished, they would just never happen.

He would always be standing alone on the other side of a chasm, one that would always be too wide, no matter how hard he or anyone would try to lessen it.

* * *

Keith did not belong in space with Voltron.

Pilot of the Black Lion he might’ve been, but he was still an outlander. The rest of them fit together seamlessly, their bonds were natural and quick. Sure, Lance, Pidge and Hunk had spent much more time with each other and were obviously closer, but they clearly all had that soul connection as well. Even with Lance’s constant flirtations to Allura, the two had grown since their first meeting, becoming not only strong teammates, but also close friends.

The only person on the team that Keith could say he had a soul deep bond with was Shiro, and right now Shiro was gone. There was no instant click when it came to the rest of his teammates, they were not naturally compatible. Perhaps in another life they could have been and Keith was just bad at expressing his appreciation for them, how much he wished to be liked by them. Not only as a leader, but as a friend, too.

Did any of them see him as a friend? Keith wanted to consider the team his friends—as his family even, but it was a challenge. He’d always had a hard time connecting to other people, to create a deep bond and be confident in how they felt towards him, and being stuck in the middle of space light years away from Earth with this group of people made them no exception.

Shiro had always been as close as a brother and thought the same of him, Keith was entirely sure of this—he always would be—but what about the other paladins?

For the majority of the time that they’d known each other, been trapped in space together, it seemed that Lance despised him. Keith had never paid much heed to his fellow students in the Galaxy Garrison, if you showed him a yearbook he would probably only be able to identify five people, Shiro included, so it was no surprise that he didn’t recognize the other boy. It was nothing personal, Keith just hadn't cared enough to learn the names of all his peers at the Garrison, but to Lance this seemed to be a personal offense. And from that moment things just spiraled into more bickering and dislike. Recently they’d been getting better, but they still had a long while to go.

Pidge seemed not to know how to express herself to others or quickly build solid relationships with them any better than Keith did; the only reason that she, Lance, and Hunk were so close was because of the later’s persistence to befriend her at the Garrison, something that had taken years. Even then, Keith wasn’t capable of the easy love and congenial personality that Lance had to build up a strong bond with her. Not that either were trying too hard anyway, though.

Hunk had made a valiant effort, the closest of any of them had gotten to really make Keith feel like he was a part of the team, like someone that they all trusted and wanted to be around, but in the end Keith just had too many walls and defenses, shoving away everyone who tried to come near him no matter how much he wished that they could.

Allura was even more complicated than Lance was. There was almost always a formal detachment when she spoke to the paladins—she was technically their boss after all—but they were always stiffer to Keith, undoubtedly because he was part Galra. How was he supposed to gain her personal trust and positive opinion when he was of the same race that had annihilated her entire race? Keith never expected to, and even after Allura had gotten over her prejudices against Galrans, he still didn’t.

And so, despite all of the small happy moments with his fellow paladins, Keith remained on the other side of that gaping chasm, wishing more than ever that it would just disappear.

It didn't matter that he was yet to it now, that he'd anticipated it and tried steeling himself from the sting, it still left a hollow hole in his chest every time that he caught glimpse of the other paladins.

* * *

Keith did not belong among the Galra—more specifically, among the Blade of Marmora.

He’d stupidly thought that with them things would be better here, with other Galra, but he was not entirely Galra, was he? Keith had been born on Earth and raised among humans. He knew nothing of Galran culture and its people. He had a blade that proved his lineage, he bore the same uniform and fought for the same cause, and yet Keith was still an outsider. At most, he was a human with some skills wielding a sword and a bit of alien blood.

Keith found himself more often than not wondering if he’d been wrong to leave Voltron. They probably didn’t miss him at all, but at least then there had been people that made an effort include him.

And maybe he was being a bit childish, but it was frustrating how foreign and invalid Keith was feeling, but for some foolish reason Keith thought that maybe among other Galra soldiers who were not hyper focused on destruction and imperialism he’d magically find his place in the universe. It was such a cliche, but he had to belong to somewhere, somehow, right?

These were Galran soldiers against Zarkon and his empire, others like Keith, and he should feel welcome, like he was no longer stranded and alone. And yet none of that had happened. He didn’t even know why he felt so surprised and hurt by it.

In its own way, the Blade was a family, but most of these soldiers had known each other for decades at least, leaving Keith on the outside of numerous inside jokes and amicable bonds and with only a few weak acquaintances that could never compare.

Among all the mixed species Galra, Keith was still the shortest, the least purple, the most closed off, the only one who cared when scouting parties came back with less people than the number that had gone.

He did not share their mentality, their physique, their culture. And even once he was reunited with his mother, it was too late. 

The longer Keith remained here, the wider the chasm grew. By now it was pointless to try to even try bridge it.

* * *

Things had changed. The war was supposedly over now. The main focus now was on returning Earth to how it was before the Galra invaded. Voltron had done this many times before, throughout their time in space they had helped hundreds of thousands of planets recover, but this was different.

Earth was where it had all began for the paladins—all of them but Allura, that is—and there was a heavier weight on them as they surveyed the damage.

“Hey,” Lance said, coming up to stand next to him. He smiled weakly through the exhaustion and grief was clear in his eyes.

“Hey,” Keith replied. There was so much to be done, but first they were out of their lions and bringing supplies to families that had been kept as prisoners by the Galra. The distant, shocked looks in people’s eyes when Keith handed them toiletry bags were nothing new, it was something that the paladins saw on every planet, but still something in his chest clenched as he saw it.

Keith had never held a deep connection to the planet like his other teammates, but still he felt the bitterness, the hollow sadness. Their home was destroyed, hardly anything left and the effects of the Galra permanent, something all too evident whenever he looked at any of the people in this camp.

“This is still kinda surreal,” Lance commented. “I feel like we should still be out in space fighting Zarkon or something. That Earth should be fine and we are still out saving the universe and whatnot. Are we even paladins anymore, now that Zarkon is gone? Are we supposed to stay here and just try to re-immerse into Earthen culture? I've got a lot of memes to catch up to."

Lance ended with a smile, but it seemed pained, artificial. This was clearly something that he had thought on a lot over the past few weeks that they'd been back on Earth, perhaps even before then.

Keith frowned. "Yeah. We get some time to help rebuild everything though, I guess. That's all that we can really get done now. Fixing things, putting them back to how they used to be, that's all we can really do now."

"Back to how they were," Lance said. He turned to Keith. "Does that mean that you're going back to your desert shack?"

Keith shrugged. "I mean, I guess. There isn't really anywhere else I can really go, and I'd rather not stay on the Garrison, so—"

"Let me stop you right there," Lance cut in. There was a fire in his eyes now, something irritated and...concerned. "I know you aren't really that big on interaction and whatever, and yeah, we all have families we're happy to see again, but you're our family now too. We aren't just going to let you go off and be all lone-wolfey again. You're completely stuck with us now, and if you try to object, Hunk and Shiro will kick down your door and we will wrap you in a blanket, you hear?"

Keith resisted laughing, instead rolling his eyes, though he couldn't help but smile a bit. "Alright fine."

Pidge walked up then, a pile of blankets in her arms and Allura and Hunk following behind with a crock pot of soup and a stack of bowls. "Hey guys," Pidge said, attempting a wave. The blankets only spilled out of her grasp and Keith stepped forward to take a few from her. "We were headed over to the mess hall to drop some stuff off. You two coming with?”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “We’ve got to get these extra bags over there with the rest anyway.” He waited for Keith to nod as well, and the five of them fell into step together as they made their way through the hallway.

Somehow over his time with the Blade and on the way back to Earth, Keith had come to a realization. They each had their differences, sure, but it was not anything that completely divided them. Coran, Allura, Pidge, Hunk, Lance, and Shiro—they were his family. They wanted him there, to have him be a part of the group and bridge the chasm that Keith had dug around himself. 

This was a time for rebuilding, for growth and learning. Perhaps it was also the time for him to let his friends across as well.

**Author's Note:**

> yeahhhh can you tell i am sad lonely and like to project my social and cultural anxiety on Keith? 
> 
> ANYWAY. this is a writing style that I usually don't write in so sorry if it was kind of awkward? anyway, more klance fluff fics are coming shortly don't worry I just thought you know might as well send this old piece of sadness out and I hope it was ok!
> 
> thanks for reading have a great day/night/whatever leave a kudos or even click on this fic and i'll cry that is all and bye
> 
> [my tumblr](https://adverbialstarlight.tumblr.com%22)


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